This invention relates generally to improved techniques for packaging and dispensing strand material and the like.
In the following specification and claims, the term "strand material" is employed in a general sense to apply to all kinds of elongated material including wire, tape, textile materials, or otherwise, and the term "coil" is intended to mean the product of a winding machine, whatever its form.
In the past, a large variety of spools, reels, rolls, and other containers have been utilized for packaging various forms of strand material, whether textile, tape, wire, or of some other general form. In some instances, such containers served as an outer protection for the goods contained. In other instances, such containers served as an attractive advertising display for the goods. In some other instances, such containers also served to dispense the strand material from the coil. However, in most cases, the coil was exposed to pilferage and damage to its outer surfaces.
Those known containers which were constructed to dispense the strand material were often of a complex design employing an excessive amount of material and requiring excessive labor or expensive machinery for their production. With many such containers, it was necessary for the entire coil to rotate in order to dispense the strand material. Such rotation created friction which was harmful to the stand material. In addition, the drag thus produced prevented easy and rapid removal of the strand material from the coil. Another undesirable result of such known designs was the fact that the strand material became twisted as it was withdrawn from the package.
To avoid this resultant twist, it has been found desirable to utilize coils having a universal wind. The term "universal wind" refers to a coil wound in such a manner that the strand material forms two complete turns, or multiples thereof, for each traverse across the face of the coil being wound. By reason of the universal wind, the strand material can be readily withdrawn from the coil in a twistless fashion at relatively high rates of payout. However, even in these instances, there were drawbacks in that such dispensing packages were of complex and costly design and not readily applicable to mass production techniques.